By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent
Wayne Kaplan can see individual atoms. The associate professor in Haifa’s Technion University doesn’t have superpowers, however.
What he does have is a microscope in his lab with high enough resolution to see those atoms, which allows him to research “the way atoms are arranged at the meeting point between two different materials,” Kaplan says. “The key is to try to rearrange the atoms at the interface and change the properties of the atom.”
In other words, Kaplan likens his work to his adopted country’s jagged border. With all its ins and outs and multiple points, it can hold much more energy than a straight border. It is that extra energy he works to harness and transform.
Now an Israeli citizen, Kaplan grew up in Milwaukee and first attended Johns Hopkins University. After his sophomore year, he transferred to Technion, Israel’s world renowned technical university, to finish his undergraduate studies and decided he wanted to stay.
“It’s a world apart,” he says, explaining how much more rigorous the Israeli university’s teaching approach and curriculum — particularly for a student who is just learning Hebrew — can be. “It’s not a walk in the park.”
He was offered his post-doctorate in Stuttgart, Germany, and then took the associate professorship back at Technion.
The years spent in Haifa have given Kaplan the air of a native Israeli. He keeps his hair cropped short, and peppers his speech with an “ehhh” as he thinks aloud, a sound unique to modern Hebrew.
At Technion, most of Kaplan’s work is with metals, but anyone who owns a digital camera or carries one of those little USB data storage devices around their necks will be familiar with Kaplan’s work. Flash memory, which holds data on those cards, is his specialty.
“It’s really engineering atom by atom,” Kaplan says, “at the nano level.”
In fact, Technion holds patents related to the flash memory and how it works on multiple computer operating systems. Yet the researchers continue to dig ever deeper.
“We’re looking at an interface between a liquid and a solid,” Kaplan says, while explaining a bit about chaos theory. “It turns out that when a liquid is in contact with a crystal solid, the crystal induces order in the liquid, it doesn’t behave like a liquid anymore. “This is actually really kind of cool,” he adds, and talks about the uses for liquid metals at high temperatures.
He says they are still trying to figure out how to make the liquids stable, because upon losing their liquid properties, the structures never remains the same. Kaplan points to various memory storage and adhesion applications — in both defense and industrial cases — where this research could be useful.
When Kaplan visited Seattle earlier this month, he spoke to Technion’s supporters about ways the school is making a difference.
“What’s really unique about Technion is that on one hand, it’s basic research,” Kaplan says. “On the other hand there are professors who interact with industry on a daily basis. And I think what the Technion is doing, that no one else comes close to in Israel, is this link between basic science and applied technology. I think that rapid transfer of basic science into applied tech and right into industry really plays a critical role. It has made its impact.”
On a more somber note, however, he also spoke about the university’s challenge of enabling its students to complete their studies while taking off a month at time when called into the Israel Defense Force reserves.
“Imagine undergraduates are taking a very intensive course, and suddenly leaving for 30 days in the middle of the semester — that’s a month out of 12 or 14 weeks — that’s usually enough to throw a student out of the course,” Kaplan says. “It’s even worse…right before the end of the semester when the exams come. It’s really a big problem.”
An entire framework at Technion has been set up to help students ease back into their schooling, and Kaplan works directly with those having trouble. Over $1 million has been raised in the U.S. through the American Technion Society specifically for the purpose. The program includes setting up special dates for retaking finals, recording every lecture and making it available on the Internet, and tutoring.
Balancing between the army and schooling can be difficult, especially when students must also work to afford their tuition and housing, as many do. Yet it is a situation that is not uncommon at the university.
Especially with the emotional toll, easing back into studies is not a simple matter.
“It’s really quite difficult,” Kaplan says. From the front lines, “it’s a 45-minute drive, but it’s not a 45-minute solution to go from battle to down-time” to jumping right back into classes. “It really does take a while.”
A reservist himself, Kaplan is occasionally called from his own job, where he is on the front lines during his time in the army. He says his priority is ensuring his troops make it home safely. Yet he feels sympathy for the Palestinians he must fight against.
“The lack of food and the situation for them is really tough. At the same time, some of them are shooting at you,” he says, “so we try to keep a logical perspective about it.”
His faculty position does not exempt him from service, either.
“This year I do 36 days,” he says, but he spoke about how sometimes the call would be especially inopportune.
“During [Operation] Defensive Shield, I got called up two days before I was supposed to go to a conference.”
Though his colleagues were concerned for his well-being, but he said he has not experienced any academic discrimination because of his army service or his Israeli citizenship. Academics sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, including one high-profile case that resulted in one Oxford University leaving his post, have increased in number over the past several years.
His department, which spends so much time looking at the energy created between the tiniest of things, has also suffered from the large-scale tension of the intifada.
“I had one student killed in action,” Kaplan says. But that’s not all.
“Unfortunately, much closer to home, one of my colleague’s daughters was on the bus in Haifa that blew up.”
She had been sitting right next to the bomber, so it took a day for forensics teams to identify her. She was 17.